


revenge is sweet, but so am i

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, Dark, Death, Gen, this is kinda gory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 16:30:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1109037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Megido ladies (and Calliope) get revenge on those who have wronged them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	revenge is sweet, but so am i

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kwwehley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwwehley/gifts).



You didn’t think that haunting her was deserving of this.

She pushed Tavros off of a cliff in a vain, childish attempt to make him ‘stronger’. It was unnecessary, and ridiculous. He lay on the ground for hours, calling people for help. You’re not sure how he got back up to his hive, but he couldn’t walk. He could hardly do anything.

She needed to be put back in her place.

She was out of control.

You summoned the ghosts to go to her hive, never able to leave her alone in peace and quiet. They were the ghosts of those she’d killed to feed her lusus, and then some that she probably just killed for fun. They were enraged and sad before you gave them this opportunity, now perfectly content with making her suffer with the guilt of her past. You expected her to retaliate, but not like this. You had groaned heavily when her text started to blink on your screen. Why bother talking to her? But then, she mentioned Sollux. Would he have really made the long journey to see you without telling you? You didn’t want to believe Vriska and get caught in her web of lies, but... You had to be sure. As you stood outside, watching a form on the horizon grow in size, you barely heard the ping of a message. You looked up at Sollux once he was near, a grin crossing your face as you laughed lightly. 

He really did come! Just for you!

Your grin suddenly faded, once you realized something was wrong- terribly wrong. A yellow, shiny substance dripped out of the corner of Sollux’s mouth, covering his hands. He held a jar in one hand, his expression blank and calm and... He looked at peace. You wanted to turn, to grab your lusus and run, run far and maybe try to stop Sollux from hurting himself, but you were mesmerised. Funny that you’d die an idiot’s death, staring up at your killer who knew not of the situation until he fell from the sky hours later and found your blood covering the ruins, and sobbed.

By that point, you were floating in some sort of limbo. You were awake, but certainly not alive. You felt hollow, like a piece of you was missing. And, you didn’t care. You didn’t care about yourself, or your friends, or anything. You took to destroying things for fun, and occasionally finding your way to Vriska’s hive, watching her invisibly through the window. You forgot what anger and hate and sadness felt like, but maybe you’d feel those, had you been alive.

After a period of time, the length of which you’re not sure... Days, months, years, you don’t know. Time had no meaning to you anymore. Anyway, your friends decided to play the game that you and Sollux had designed, the one that would bring about the end of the world. You wouldn’t lie in saying that you were... prepared. You had been waiting for this for a long time, and you were very, very... Excited wasn’t a good word for it. No, you were simply ready. You prototype yourself with a frog, existing in a state of all-knowing power, but feeling nothing, and knowing no point in using that knowledge. Eventually, Vriska messages you and talks about a surprise she has for you. You’re nonplussed. Okay, cool, whatever.

It’s a body. A robotic body that looks strikingly like yourself... You think. Is that what you looked like? You can’t remember. Equius even managed to get your hair right, according to Vriska. That hits a nerve deep inside of you, and you spend a lot of time circling the cold steel, studying it, staring at it. It’s you, in every way possible, you decide. You know it’s time to use that body, and you feel yourself slip into it, feel your ghostly, semi-physical form meld with cold, hard steel that will bend and move in every way your old body could. Once inside, you still feel cold and hollow, but there’s something there now.   
Emotions come to you, flying back at the speed of light, and you can’t control them.

One that sticks out to you is how much you care about Equius. What? _What!?_ No, that’s not right! It _can’t_ be right. You couldn’t _stand_ him! You glower, beginning to yell in a robotic, choppy way that you recognize as an imitation of your voice. You can’t say you like it more than your hollow rasping from your sprite days. What has he done?! He whimpers and squirms, trying to avoid the obvious, when he admits it. He programmed the body to have feelings: specifically, romantic feelings for him.   
You gag, ripping inside of your chest and pulling the stupid, robotic heart from your body and smashing it. That feels so much better with hands, destroying something, feeling something shatter beneath your sheer power. You turn to him, dripping the blue sludge that runs through both of your veins now, pulling him towards you harshly as you hover in the air, screaming in his face.   
Then, you kiss him.

It’s disgusting.

You drop him after that, soon forcing him to repair your chest, then helping him fight imps and try to succeed in the game, even though you know it’s pointless. He seems happy with your presence anyway, and you’re repulsed. You begin to seek out any chance to get away, when one presents itself to you that you should have realized a long, long time ago.

You’re still not in control of your emotions when you begin to time travel. Soon, you find your way to Vriska’s planet, hovering in a clearing with your music boxes at your sides, your arms splayed out in a stance that shows only power. Vriska stands before you, rolling up her sleeves like she believes she could fight you.

Slamming heavily to the ground with a metallic clang, you sigh. All the anger and frustration you’ve ever felt decides to bubble up at this moment, and you punch her, kick her, throw her into cliffs, slam her into the ground, and destroy her body, like she did yours through Sollux.

She’s like a pane of glass in your hands, shattering and splintering and breaking, and it’s so satisfying. Your thoughts, normally an angry symphony that swirls and screeches with the voices that never leave your head, suddenly become still. The anger remains, but now there’s rhythm and reason; your mind becomes less like a cacophony and more like a melody. You hold her shirt with one hand and she stares up at you with a mix of terror and frustration, and you punch her so hard that blood spatters from her mouth and smears on the ground. Her cerulean blood covers your normally pristine hands, and you feel a sense of angry bliss- in death, you are clean and calm. But now, you are ferocious and bloody and it’s wonderful. You feel less dead the closer she gets to being dead. It’s like you’re stealing the life from her body and using it to rejuvenate yourself, and you adore it. She stops whining after a while, gritting her teeth and spitting blood and letting you do what you want. You shove her under the water of her land, letting her thrash and writhe before pulling her out hard, seeing her head jerk backwards with the speed that you move her. She doesn’t break her neck, sadly, but she’s suffering. You wouldn’t say that you had suffered much, but maybe she’ll die and exist in that half-real state where you’re not sure about anything. With one final slam to the ground, you think she’s finished. You then teleport away, leaving behind nothing but Tavros by the body’s side. You hope she dies in a bloody, horrible way that’s drawn-out and disgusting.

She caused your downfall, but also was an important instrument in your uprising.

 

 

_Your_ downfall begins with him.

You had had your suspicions for a long time; hearing excuse after excuse and having him leave you alone night after night. You trusted him, however, simply because you _loved_ him. For some reason, you thought he loved you, Damara Megido, too.

You were a fool, for doing so.

You decided, one night, to see if your suspicions were correct.   
They were, of course. You watched from behind a tree as he flirted with and kissed the Zahhak boy. You stood in shocked silence for a long time, not bothering to interrupt, instead watching.   
After they left, you painfully decided to take the high road and not get revenge, even though the wounds ran deep into you and seemed to cut you open every time you thought of Rufioh, or anything that the two of you had in common. It cut you open like a knife in your heart, tearing you apart from the inside out, and it hurt. It was a harsh pain that never really left you, always burned low in your body like the embers of a fire.

You thought, once you all began playing the game, that your life would turn around, and that the pain would stop. But, of course, you were dead wrong.

Rufioh had got the ball rolling, but Meenah had picked it up and fired it downhill with a cannon.

She would follow you, nagging and harassing you, on an almost daily basis. She’d push you around and call you out on your faults and attempt to break you like the porcelain doll you had always tried to be. She tried to snap you, to get you to freak out. She would never stop until Aranea or Porrim pulled her away, and no one dared tell Kankri what was going on. She would always, always make sure you knew it was your fault he cheated on you, that it was your fault for being the pathetic, needy loser that no one needed in their life anyway. She made sure you knew what everyone thought of you, the things they said when you weren’t around. You weren’t above crying in front of her.  
The brief grace periods when she’d leave you alone were the times where you wouldn’t cry, you’d think. You would calculate. Eventually, one day, it hits you like a slap in the face, and suddenly everything makes sense.

It doesn’t hurt any more.

With a delicate smirk, you pull your skirt higher up your thighs, replacing your knee-highs with thigh-highs; making yourself seductive and dangerous. Equipping your needles is an afterthought- you place them in your bun in a subtle attempt to hide them.

He seems surprised, but pleased to see you. Your smirk changes to a scowl as you begin to take out your frustration. Feeling him break and bend under your power is euphoric, and soon you can’t stop. His warm blood coats your hands and clothes and face, making you feel feral and wild. Soon, you begin laughing in a way that makes him stop protesting, stop whimpering.  
He recognizes that laugh, you know he does. That’s the one you always used when he used to make you laugh. The one you used when he still cared about you. He stops resisting your anger, letting you attack him and tear at his wings that always fascinated you. Eventually, you get him on his stomach and you step on his neck hard, feeling a snap beneath your foot. A large, maniac grin crosses your face as the feeling of victory flows through your veins like a drug, dulling all other emotions, and leaving you a cold shell with a large grin as the only thing to prove you’re not completely dead inside.   
The guilt that should have accompanied almost killing him never comes, and you don’t want it to. You leave him lying in the dirt, crying for help and being unable to move anything. He calls your name once, and you turn back with a grin, tilting your head innocently. He’s terrified. Good.

Next, you find Meenah. She laughs in your face, seeing you covered in blood and slaps you on the back. She congratulates you on finally growing out of your wimpy, meek phase. You shove a needle into her arm. She blinks down at you in that stupid way of hers, before a predatory grin crosses her face and her trident appears.

Stab, block, get stabbed, use magic, and dodge her trident. It repeats seemingly endlessly, and the ground beneath the two of you soon seems to be a glorious mixture of fuchsia and red, and you resist the feral urge to roll around in it. Meenah keeps up banter the entire time, her braids dragging through the dust and the ends coated in the thick, sticky hues that coat the ground.  She pants heavily, though she won’t go down without a fight. Eventually you jab a needle hard into the flesh near her spine, and she collapses, falling to her knees first, then onto her stomach. A laugh bubbles in your throat, along with blood welling somewhere inside of you and rising in your throat like hot bile. Spitting the hot, thick fluid onto the ground, you flip her over with a foot and still she sneers at you. Your laugh dies as quickly as it came as a needle stabs into her heart, over and over and over, so many times that it seems to blur. Eventually, you hear panicked footsteps and a soft shriek once the runner is close enough. Aranea stops outside the clearing that you stand in, staring at you with an expression of pure terror. You hop off of Meenah, kicking her body once for effect before leaving quickly, like a warm wind that never seems to last long.

After that point, you didn’t talk to anyone very long. You figure out how to manipulate time to your advantage, sabotaging everyone else and not hesitating to harm anyone who came in your way. Horrus was not the first to die because of your actions, but he was the first to get in your way, and everyone else seemed to avoid you after the news spread.

It was really a matter of time until someone decided you all needed to start over. They asked you to initiate the scratch, and you couldn’t have been happier. Finally, everyone would get what they deserved- a chance at a new life where you wouldn’t forgive or forget, and vow to make life terrible for them all.

You die with the excitement still in your heart, staring at Meenah and realizing too late that she was going to kill all of you, and rip away your chances at starting over.

If you could kill her, here in the afterlife, you would. Over, and over, and over, until every single copy of that wench was gone.

And maybe, you’ll do just that.

 

 

You can’t do anything.

You’re trapped.

That was the plan all along.

You would be a lovely little schoolgirl for the one with the cue ball for a head, and then as soon as you got free, you’d be the handmaid to the monster who caused even more death and destruction with you by his side. You hate it, but you’re stuck. Eventually, you snap. You can’t take any more guilt, so you stop feeling bad for corrupting the society that was supposed to be yours.

It’s nice, almost.

Mostly, you feel empty and cold, and lost.

Eventually, during your time travels, you stumble across the vague knowledge of a young girl, killed and betrayed by her twisted brother.

You laugh.

Of course! He had someone before you. However, she didn’t serve him; she defied and hated him, so he got rid of her.

You have to find her.

She is your only hope, other than the sweet release of death.

You spend years scouring the galaxies for her, looking for her presence. She’d be hard to find. She’s hiding.

Eventually, you stumble across a corner of the galaxy that’s too tiny to even be noticed, too subtle to draw attention. It’s dark, lonely, and secluded, and you’re wondering if you’ve stumbled across the end of existence before you hear quiet sobs. A softly glowing spiral curls across the ground, as if guiding you to the center. In the center sits a small figure, all green and hunched over on itself. 

“I’m so lonely,” it whispers, as though talking to itself.

“You... don’t... need to... be.” You rasp, your first time speaking in decades. The creature jumps, horrified, and you see how small and innocent it is. You feel a pull to it, and wonder if it’s her. “Hello.”

“W-Who are you?! How did you find me!?” The creature stands, blinking at you with empty eyes, and you descend to stand in front of it. You feel it watching you, taking in your appearance, and its face contorts in displeasure upon making eye contact, noticing the rapidly oscillating colors in the depths of your sockets.

“I am...” You cannot remember your name. Did you ever have one? You certainly did, though it escapes you now. “The Handmaid. I have come because I am in need of your help, Miss.” It’s her. You know it is. It has to be. Who else would hide themselves in a place where almost nothing could locate them?

“How do you know who I am?!” She shrieks, shaking. She’s terrified. You know why, due to firsthand experience with her tormentor.

“You are the only thing my _Lord_ fears. He is looking fervently for any trace of you, and so I decided to join him in that search, secretly. I need your help in defeating him.” You spit his title, afraid to say his name. He had an uncanny way of finding anyone who said it, even his ‘new name’, Lord English.

“And- and why should I help you?” Calliope is afraid, and nervous, though the prospect of defeating him excites her, you can tell.

“I do not wish to gain anything from this except death.”  Oh, death! The only thing you have longed for since you became that fool’s slave.

“Why?”

“Do you know much about my race?”

“Yes, I know a lot. Really, I know far too much.”

“Then you know that each blood rank has a different lifespan. I am from the lowest lank, other than mutants. I am only meant to have a short lifespan. Upon being his slave, I have lived millennia. I have outlived most of those in ranks my people only dream of. To put it simply, _I am an abomination. I want to die_.” You put such emphasis into those words; let the girl feel your pain, and your agony.

“I want to live,” she whispers.

“Life is not as glorious as it seems, my dear.”

The two of you work together, combining your knowledge on your Lord, and eventually, you devolve a plan. You’re not sure if it will work, but the two of you have got to try.

Maybe, together, you can kill him.

Only time will tell, you think, as the two of you wait for the exact moment.

At least she’s not alone anymore.


End file.
